


The Landscape After Cruelty

by abbyandersn (ahdraste)



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Abby Gets A Girlfriend, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Eventual Smut, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Jealousy, Lesbian Character, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Not Actually Unrequited Love, POV Lesbian Character, Reluctant friends to lovers, Romance, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers, The Last of Us Spoilers, WLF | Washington Liberation Front (The Last of Us), and also expanding on the wlf and seraphite conflict, but also happy moments!, doing my best at realism and accurately representing these characters, lesbian yearning all around, not a self-insert, so sorry to owen but abby deserves a girlfriend, this will probably end up a little canon divergent i know what i'm about, well it is... but we're also addressing character trauma, you thought this was just a crappy romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:00:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26520292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahdraste/pseuds/abbyandersn
Summary: They were settling for her.Well, at least their expectations were realistically low. She didn’t have much to live up to, considering everyone else was dead.-Or, Abby gets a girlfriend. Eventually. Set a year before the events of the game.
Relationships: Abby (The Last of Us)/Original Female Character(s), Mel/Owen (The Last of Us), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 58





	1. at a crossroads

**Author's Note:**

> hey there, everyone! i've got a disease called abby brainrot and unfortunately, it's incurable, so that's how we got here. this is going to a multi-chapter fic, updating probably...? every week? it starts a year before the events of the game, including Joel's death, and will probably veer into canon divergent territory at some point. i'm honestly here to have fun with this, and i hope you enjoy it too! 
> 
> disclaimer: i don't own Abby, TLOU, or anything you recognize in here. OCs are mine. the title comes from a Richard Siken poem, because unfortunately i am still that annoying bitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey there, everyone! i've got a disease called abby brainrot and unfortunately, it's incurable, so that's how we got here. this is going to a multi-chapter fic, updating probably...? every week? it starts a year before the events of the game, including Joel's death, and will probably veer into canon divergent territory at some point. i'm honestly here to have fun with this, and i hope you enjoy it too!
> 
> disclaimer: i don't own Abby, TLOU, or anything you recognize in here. OCs are mine. the title comes from a Richard Siken poem, because unfortunately i am still that annoying bitch.

She’d been waiting for almost an hour. 

The guy assigned to guard duty glared at Jude as she walked around the hall for the sixth--no, seventh, time. She’d started out sitting, then standing, and then finally pacing as the minutes ticked on and on. He glared harder as she rapped her knuckles along the wall, tapped her foot, and bounced on her toes. Then sighed and nearly stomped his foot as she took off her jacket, folded it over her arms, put it back on again, this time with the sleeves pushed back, and shoved her hands in her pockets. 

His name was Kyle, he had a lazy eye, and he’d always been kind of a dick, so she didn’t pay him much mind. There’s only so much sway a guy named Kyle wearing a Dr. Pepper shirt under his official WLF jacket could have. Eighth time around the hall, though, he finally snapped, “would you cut that shit out?” and Jude almost thanked him for the momentary distraction from the low thrum of her nerves screaming _ Danger! Danger! Danger! _

A smile tightened the edge of her mouth, and she sank her teeth into her cheek to keep it down. Rolling back on her heels, Jude was suddenly the picture of confusion, eyebrows arched and lips pressed into a soft ‘o’ shape. “What shit?” She said, laying on the too-dumb-to-know rather thick. Must’ve been convincing enough, because Kyle--poor, stupid Kyle--looked surprised, then a little resigned.

“The fuckin’--” he started, sighing, and Jude heard the low hint of a southern accent coat his vowels. “The pacing. You know what I mean. Just sit down or something, okay? You’re pissin’ me off.” He said, but it didn’t have any  _ oomf _ , so he must’ve thought that was the end of that. 

Rude ass. It was his  _ job _ to sit here and look ugly.  _ She  _ could be doing fifty other things with her time besides sitting and waiting for someone to show up and tell her what to do (even if that someone was Isaac, who literally told everyone what to do, who literally walked around and owned the place, and could decide on a whim when and where someone should go) and she ground her teeth. “I’m pissing you off…” Jude drawled, slow and careful, and pointed at herself. He nodded. Yes, yes exactly, his expression said, as if she’d solved a very difficult problem, and so Jude nodded back. Just to be polite, and show that she understood his dilemma. “Have you tried not doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Being pissed off.”

“What?” 

“Being pissed off.” She repeated, slowly and carefully. His face turned an interesting shade of pink, and it became twice as hard to take him seriously. Not that she really had in the first place. Taking on the soft, even tone of her once upon a time weed smoking, hippie, granola mother, Jude hummed, “have you tried yoga? Chronic stress is bad for the body, y’know, and a healthy body is a healthy mind--”

Kyle, less rodenty pink and more I-will-fucking-kill-you red, thumbed at his gun and said, “will you shut the fuck up?” his face crushing up into a sneer.

Ah shit. Deescalate. Time to deescalate. She threw her hands up in the universal sign of  _ I Surrender _ , and waved them like a flag. “Sorry, sorry!” No she wasn’t. A second passed, Kyle settled back into his chair, and then just to be a dick, she mumbled under her breath, “just trying to be helpful.”

“Like fuck you are, Copeland--”

At the very same second that Jude was pretty sure she’d driven Kyle to committing the truly heinous crime of removing her from this earth, a man turned the corner, and they both got very still. 

Isaac--firm, hard eyed, and carrying with him the unsaid authority of a man who had taken what he had by the throat. Kyle jumped up from his chair, any bravado he might’ve had a second ago washed away into the unquestioning subordination of a grunt. Jude felt slick, cold anticipation snake up her spine, and her breathing stuttered to a stop as Isaac slowly stepped into the hallway, his expression unplaceable outside of some edge of suspicion, maybe a little annoyance.

He looked between them for a second, like they were two kids he’d caught doing something stupid, and then looked at her head on. Jude’s hands clenched and unclenched in their pockets. The rest of her was still, so still she couldn’t flinch when he leveled the full weight of suspicious gaze on her. She supposed anyone who’d effectively crawled his way out of every kind of hell and come out the leader of a semi-functioning post-apocalyptic community would be a little tense. But her skin still itched and prickled as she watched him watch her.

He wasn’t alone. A woman hung back a little ways back, silent, just watching. Tall, broad shouldered, a long rope of plaited hair resting on her chest. Stood with her arms crossed--muscular, built like a damn wall, and her name suddenly clicked into place. Abby. The closest thing they’d ever had to a solid interaction was standing in the same line in the cafeteria for shitty breakfast tacos, and Jude knew her best by word-of-mouth. Ex-Firefly, handled herself like a gun in a knife fight, and a couple of the soldiers Jude talked to on occasion swore by the fact that she’d saved their lives.

Jude was either about to be presented with the WLF medal for  _ Best Mechanic Slash Occasional Plumber and  _ _Electrician_ , subhead:  _ thanks for putting our fucking trucks back together for the fifth fucking time after we let them get shot to hell by Scars _ . Or, she was in very  _ deep _ shit. 

Isaac didn’t hand out participation awards for doing your fucking job, so it was the second one.

“Judith. Judith Copeland, right?” Isaac said, like he didn’t already know the answer. It snapped her out of the minor haze the building panic threw her into. She could feel her heart jump up against her ribs, hard and fast. 

They’d only directly spoken one time in the year since Jude and her mom had been picked up by the wolves, since they’d realized she was pretty good with her hands and a wrench, and she hadn’t so much as run into him in the hallway since. Which was fine by her, because Isaac was fucking terrifying. Because Isaac and the WLF had inducted her and her scared mother into the community with a gun in one hand and a promise that they’d be safe here, they just had to pull their own weight. 

So Jude pulled. And she hadn’t stopped since.

He was waiting for an answer, she realized. “Uh, yeah. Yes. Sir.” She was pretty sure she heard Abby snort, but she didn’t look away from Isaac to check. 

“Come on.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the elevator, and didn’t wait to see if she’d follow, moving slowly in front of her. He has a limp, she realized. He was hiding it pretty well, but there was a slight pause between one step and the next. 

The elevator loomed in front of her like a gaping mouth, and she went over the entirety of her year with the WLF in her head, wondering where she went wrong. She did her job--and she was pretty damn good at it too--she followed orders, she never once complained, she never did anything to put anyone in jeopardy. Her worst crime would be mouthing off once or twice, and that was practically the WLF standard of behavior when it came to literally anyone but Isaac, so she doubted he’d brought her up here just to ax her for being snarky with her fucking superviser. 

But she didn’t have long to think about turning the other way and running. Abby stepped up behind her, waiting for her to walk first, and still hadn’t said a word. Blocked her from the exit, like she knew what Jude had been thinking. 

The image of two wolves herding their prey where they wanted it to go popped into her head, all teeth snapping at heels and no way out. The air tightened in her chest, but Jude walked. What was really about 10 feet felt somehow far too long and not long enough in the few seconds it took to cross. Abby followed, her footsteps light but ominous, into the elevator. And in there the silence was deafening, the light low and claustrophobic. 

Abby rested the jut of her hip against the handlebar, staring at the ground. Isaac stood in front of the door, his hands behind his back. No one spoke. No one moved. The lowlit elevator groaned and creaked its way up. 

Her nails dug into the skin of her palm, stinging, but grounding, and as the doors swished open, she’d worked that building fear under control. Exhaling evenly, Jude followed Isaac and Abby into what had to be his… office? Planning center? _Lair?_

It had a hell of a view, if anything else. Hazy sunlight illuminated the room, catching on the dust particles in the air, and the sprawling landscape outside was silent, lovelier here than it ever was on the ground. There were maps on the table and up on the whiteboards, all with circles and x’s and small, scrawled notes she wasn’t close enough to read. It wasn’t sparsely furnished, but nothing about it was warm, or soft, and welcoming. This wasn’t a place to stay--it was a place to plan, to move. 

“Take a seat.” Isaac said, gesturing toward a chair. As for him, he settled on the table in front of it, watching Jude sit down, her back stiff as a board. With the methodical slowness of an old bad habit, he cracked his knuckles one by one, and it was all she could do to not flinch with each little pop.  _ Just fucking tell me what you want. _

Abby stood by the door, arms still crossed and mouth a thin, firm line. Jude met her eyes, but there were no answers in the careful blankness of her face. Abby’s brows furrowed a little, but she didn’t break eye contact, didn’t even look like she was breathing. 

Jude looked away first, eyeing the scuff marks on her boots. Next to her--too close, too close, too close--Isaac breathed heavy and low, like he was very tired. He inhaled, and tension screwed in her shoulders. “How long have you been here? A year?” 

“Uh, just about, yeah.” It would be a year come late November. The date wasn’t exact, but she doubted Isaac cared either way--she doubted he even remembered. He had bigger problems then and he sure as shit had bigger problems now than one more person in the WLF, not even a soldier at that. He nodded, and hmm’d quietly.

“Remind me how you got here, Copeland. You and your mother--Connie, right?”

Connie Copeland was a neurotic, paranoid woman with a degree in nursing despite her shaky hands. She was first a hippie, then a medical professional with a penchant for recommending holistic remedies on the side, and then a survivor that wasn’t quite built for the world that came after the outbreak. You didn’t need a psychology degree to spot the signs of a woman who had seen too much and couldn’t quite deal with it. She hadn’t left the Stadium since their arrival, and she didn’t want to, spent most of her time working with sick kids and new mothers. If Jude had it her way, her mother would never step foot out into the world outside of the carefully secured headquarters ever again. She deserved to feel safe after so long.

Jude spoke to her last night. She’d seemed fine, then, if a little jittery. A pit of dread opened up in her stomach, and a rush of worst case scenarios came to mind. He was here to tell her her mother had died. He was here to tell her her mother had finally snapped. He was here to-- fuck, had her mother been called out to the front? Is that why she was here now? How the fuck had she been cleared for that?

She couldn’t help it. The question spilled out before she could reconsider. “Is-- is my mom okay? Did something happen with her?”

Isaac shook his head. “No, nothing like that.” He said, and Jude exhaled a breath of relief. “You’re not in trouble here, Copeland.” Maybe it was supposed to be a reassurance, but Isaac said nothing softly, nothing with comfort, and it sounded like a strange sort of threat to Jude. Isaac gave no quarter, no room for compromise, and he quickly redirected her back to the point. “Answer the question.”

_ Why? _ “We… uh. My family and I, we lived in Milwaukee, but the situation there was… pretty bad. About as bad as you can imagine, uhhh… food shortages, rioting, the whole nine yards.” She paused, trying to gather her thoughts, waiting for Isaac to say something. When he didn’t, she swallowed hard. “So my dad got us out. He was from Seattle, before… well, everything. But then he died. My mom and I figured we’d still try and make it here.”

“Uh huh.” Isaac stood up, circled the table, and pulled out a map. There were rings of coffee stains at the edges, and the same x’s and o’s the other maps had in red ink. He laid it down in front of her, and pointed to a circle with a question mark next to it. “We found you near here.” He sounded very sure of himself, so Jude didn’t contradict him, not that she could tell one way or another from the map. “Tangling with some Scars. Manny Alvarez was leading that unit.”

Ah. He wasn’t interested in her life story. He wanted to know something different, something specific, which made sense. She wasn’t surprised, and really should’ve known better, but a rush of embarrassment at the quick dismissal heated her cheeks all the same. 

“Yeah, I remember.”  _ Yeah. _ She remembered pretty fucking clearly. It was her first real encounter with Scars she’d only spotted from a distance. The cavalry had come in on the back of an old Ford with assault rifles and curses. When it was all over, a man with dark brown eyes held her at gunpoint as he complimented the way she’d shiv’d a giant woman wielding an ax. “Before you guys showed up, we’d spent about a month around that area.”

“A month?” Jude snapped her head to the side, and Abby met her straight on. It was the first thing she’d said since following Isaac up, her voice low and doubtful. “You spent a month in the worst part of Seattle, and you didn’t run into Scars once?” 

Jude looked between her and Isaac--Isaac, who watched her carefully, waiting to hear her answer. The feeling of being on trial only worsened, and Jude fidgeted in her chair. “Well… technically I did. At the end.”

“How the hell did you get around them?” Abby asked, standing straight up from where she’d leaned on the wall.

“It was just me.” Jude said, quiet but firm, her agitation growing.

“I thought you said you were with your mom.” Abby fired back. She wasn’t  _ unkind _ about it, but she didn’t waste words, and she didn’t let anything slide. 

“Yeah, I was. But it was just me going out. I put my mom somewhere safe, and I’d go out for supplies, things like that. She didn’t--” She sighed, pressing her thumb and forefinger to the bridge of her nose. “When we got through the worst of it, my mom couldn’t really deal with the… everything.” Beside her, Isaac made a thoughtful, if gruff noise, like he was trying to figure something out. Something that he probably wasn’t going to bestow upon her.

It chafed. He’d called her here, not the other fucking way around. The least he could do was tell her what he wanted. Jude leaned forward in the chair, half ready to spring out of it, half ready to do a full sprint to that goddamn elevator and hope the doors slammed on their fingers. “Look, what’s this about?” She bit out, and Isaac raised one dark eyebrow, daring her to take that tone with him again. 

He stared her down until Jude forced herself back into the chair, whiteknuckling the armrests. But her jaw didn’t unclench, and she couldn’t quite relax her face. After a moment, Isaac stood and paced slowly, his hands loose at his side. “So, you snuck you and your mom through Scar territory for a month, and you didn’t get caught. Not bad.” 

“Well--” she did get caught. She very much got caught. That was a very important part of her story, actually, and--

Before she could argue, Isaac interrupted. “Can you do it again?”

She must have misheard him. “...I’m sorry?” 

“You know the area. Can you get someone through there again?” She had not misheard him.

It took a second, but the full weight of what he was saying settled in. Fuck no. Fuck. No. 

She looked between the two of them. Must’ve looked horrified too, because Isaac’s face hardened, and Abby’s jaw worked, and  _ fuck _ , what the hell did they want from her? Jude wiped her palms--not sweaty, but they were about to be--on her jeans, and tried not to panic.

Isaac didn’t wait for her to process the implications of  _ everything _ he’d just asked of her. He talked, but it hummed messily in her ears, half words and slippery notes, indecipherable against the cold sweat chill that gripped her. 

That place had been  _ hell. _ Infected fucking everywhere, and the Scars whistling in the night, almost out of earshot--just enough to know that something is out there, someone could be watching. There was no such thing as safety in most places, but that part of Seattle was wild and overrun with blood and violence and decay. It was eating itself alive from the inside out. The earth had completely reclaimed the place, and there were so many shadows and hiding spots and unseen risks, you couldn’t even hope to get a group through there. The day before the WLF found her was the first time she’d dared trying to move her mother someplace new, to make any sort of substantial distance to get out. And now he wanted her to go back.

“You wouldn’t be going alone.” He said, the first clear thing she heard since he started talking, and she realized she’d be hazily looking at the spot on the wall this whole time. Isaac was leaning on his hands, looking at her directly, and Abby had come to stand next to him.

“What?”

“I’d be going with you.” Abby said, and Jude’s heart was pounding, snapping, it burned in her chest and she rubbed at the feeling, knowing she wouldn’t ease it.

“But I thought-- I was by myself, last time.” _ Why the fuck are you arguing! You don’t want this!  _ “It-- it’s easier that way. I don’t have to watch out for anyone else.” Isaac’s mouth twitched, like he was about to smile before remembering who he was, and Jude realized her misstep. 

Abby shot her a sharp glare, somewhere between offended and challenged, like she’d just been double-dared to do something ridiculous and didn’t quite know how to back down. She rolled her broad shoulders back, and it drew attention to all that corded muscle, all that undeniable strength, and her left hand curled and uncurled from a fist. “Well, if  _ that’s _ what you’re worried about, don’t be. I can take care of myself.” 

Abby looked at her like she was taking stock of her, and Jude felt the difference between them like a punch to her gut. Abby was tall and hard and cut like a hammer, and Jude knew that when she stood up, she’d only come to about her jaw. Soft and curved and not at all a soldier, not at all a knife, and that was why Abby was here. Because Isaac thought--no,  _ knew _ \--that if she went back on her own, she’d die. She wouldn’t last 24 hours out there after getting soft and comfortable with the relatively easy living at headquarters, fixing things all day and keeping her head down.

They were settling for her. 

Well, at least their expectations were realistically low. She didn’t have much to live up to, considering everyone else was dead.

“We haven’t been able to get anyone as far back as you’ve gone, Copeland. They’ve never been able to get through Scars, and then infected...”

In an ideal situation, Isaac could send in his units and let them wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am the whole fucking place. In an ideal situation, the Scars pissed their pants, turned and ran at the first sign of wolves. But this wasn’t ideal, and his men were dying, and the territory was blurry, undefined, nothing more than a red circle on a map for everyone at this base that had managed to crawl back from it unmaimed and still breathing. 

Except for her.

This wasn’t a request. Whatever they wanted from her (Isaac had probably explained it already, but Jude sure as fuck wasn’t going to ask for the cliffnotes now), it was an order, and it was an order that couldn’t be refused. “I know.” She whispered. She knew. She knew exactly how bad it was. Defeat was like a scab over a wound, no/t that she’d even really tried to fight.

“Good.” Isaac said. He came around, patted her once on the shoulder, and exchanged a look with Abby that she couldn’t decipher. And didn’t have the will to, anyways. “You leave tomorrow morning.” Fuck. 

Arguing wouldn’t get her anything but kicked out of the wolves for being a pain in the ass, so she grit her teeth and nodded her head and tried very, very hard not to scream. Or cry. “... Yes, sir. Can I ask for a favor?”

Isaac, who did not smile and did not grant favors--at least, not lightly, and never without very good reason--said nothing, but the silence gave her room to speak, and so she did. “I’d appreciate it if my mom… wasn’t told about this.” Jude said quietly, her brows furrowing. “And if I could talk to her, before I leave. So she doesn’t get the wrong idea.” Because Connie Copeland was a good woman, but she was not a strong woman, and that was okay. But it would be better this way, in the long run.

“If that’s what you want.” Isaac finally said.

“It is.”

“Alright then.” He headed toward the door, clapping Abby on the shoulder as he passed her, and turned around to face them at the elevator. “Tomorrow morning. Get plenty of sleep, you leave at dawn. Take whatever supplies you think you’ll need.” He was seeing them out, she realized. Jude stood up slowly, her legs strangely numb as she walked. 

She didn’t look at Abby as she passed her, but Abby’s gaze was hot on her neck, and Jude heard her footsteps follow shortly after. 

The elevator doors opened with a whining creak, and Jude slipped inside without looking up. She heard Abby ask, “was there anything else?” and Isaac murmur something in response, just out of earshot beyond the ringing in her ears, but she didn’t really care. Abby shuffled into the elevator seconds later, pressing the button to send them to the bottom floor. Neither woman said anything as the elevator rode down. It was blurry, and loud, and too much all at once.

Reality set in like a sack of bricks to the head. When it came right down to it, Jude had absolutely no fucking clue what she was doing, and she never had. If someone were to follow a thread right back to the beginning, they would find that she’d lucked her way out of every single shitty situation she’d ever found herself in, and there were so many she’d stopped keeping score. She’d been hitting the ground running since her dad had smuggled his family out of the great military compound of what used to be Milwaukee. It was just a matter of time till she didn’t get back up. 

“Hey,” Abby said, her fingers coming loosely around Jude’s wrist, just enough to catch her attention. “Meet me at the stadium tomorrow. Room 203. Got it?”

Jude stared at the place where Abby touched her, then scowled at her, all the half-ass politeness she’d maintained for Isaac falling away as anger gripped her. Fuck this. Fuck this whole thing. “Yeah, got it.” She bit out, turned, and left. Her wrist burned all the while. 

She didn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoyed this! right now, this story's completely unbeta'd, so bear with me. if you spot any typos or inconsistencies, feel free to let me know so i can fix them! i'll probably update this within the next week. feel free to comment if you want!! if you're interested, feel free to hmu on tumblr @ https://abbyandersn.tumblr.com/


	2. and move quietly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here's chapter two! sorry for the delay on it! I'm still trying to get used to Abby's voice... good news is, I've got the next several chapters sort of drafted, and hopefully ready to go soon! we'll gonna get into the action real quick, and my favorite trope of two people being stuck together trying to SURVIVE. because nothing breeds familiarity like life or death situations.
> 
> anyways, this IS unbeta'd, currently, so forgive any mistakes or typos you find. but, if you see something REALLY embarrassing, please let me know so I can fix it! hope you enjoy!!!
> 
> as always, I don't own TLOU or Abby, or anyone you might recognize here.

The sky was a soft, melty pink and the sun crested below the buildings by the time Jude made it back to the stadium. She gave the guards a numb little wave, turned her guns over to Pat, and made her way through the stands. Dogs barked as she passed, and a few people called out to her by name, waiting for a response, but she heard it all through a thick fog, too caught up in her own worst case scenarios.

It wasn’t that she was afraid, exactly. She’d been out in Seattle plenty of times since joining the WLF. Occasionally, her name came up for patrol, and more frequently than that she was sent out on supply runs in the husks of used-to-be autobody shops and hardware stores, picking over the remains of tools and car parts. The city itself was a shitstorm, sure, but it didn’t terrify her. No one here could afford to be terrified of it, not anymore.

So it didn’t make much sense, why she couldn’t quite feel her hands, did it? This wasn’t uncharted territory. This wasn’t new. She’d crawled and creeped through so many places, when it was still just her and Connie and her bitter determination to survive. That was so much worse. This was a job just like any other. 

She needed to get herself together. Find her mom. Pack her shit. Get some fucking sleep.

Jude rubbed at her chest once, twice, till she felt the skin under her shirt sting from the force. Her heart still bumped and burned against the boundaries of her ribcage, the way an animal pulls on a trap, and if she could’ve just made that stop, maybe everything would be alright. 

_Find her mom. Pack her shit. Get some fucking sleep._

Like it was that easy.

She made her way through the rest of the stadium on muscle memory, the walls rushing past as she dodged other wolves, till she found herself in her and her mom’s shared apartment. Copeland, Connie. Copeland, Judith. Printed out neatly under the number 105, like it actually belonged to them. It was probably an office once. A little cramped, with two medium windows facing toward the outside, her mother’s bed on one side of the room and her own on the other. It’d already been cleared out by the time she and her mom had come here, had belonged to some poor bastard that got bit, and they hadn’t filled the place yet. Jude still hadn’t quite shaken the feeling of intruding, of filling in spaces left by ghosts. 

Just a quick glance around told her that her mom was still gone. Probably finishing her shift up, then. Which was good. It gave her time to think of a good lie, one that Connie wouldn’t come around and question; at least, not for a while. 

But as soon as she sat down on the bed, her shoes still on and her skin grimy from the day, exhaustion set in hard and fast. The adrenaline and panic and overthinking from earlier wore off like a bad high, and Jude found herself thinking _just a few hours_ , her body humming somewhere between awake and asleep, and then... black. Blissful, quiet black.

* * *

“Hey, honey.” A voice murmured, muffled, watery. Jude felt her boots get tugged off, and then the slightly scratchy texture of a throw blanket drawing up against her arm, her neck. Sleep pulled at her, warm, comfortable, but then a cool hand carded through her hair, and Jude forced herself awake. 

Her mouth felt like she’d swallowed cotton balls. “Hey, Ma.” She whispered, voice thick and drowsy. The room was dark, hazy, a blob of dim yellow light pouring from the nearby lamp casted everything in half-shadows; her mother, the largest of them all, seated on the side of her bed. Jude rubbed at her eyes, trying to ease the itchiness there, and blinked the remnants of sleep away till her vision cleared. “What time is it?”

“Just past ten.” Connie said, gently prying at the snarls and tangles in Jude’s hair. Jude couldn’t make out her expression, catching only the outline of her mouth, her curved brow. “I’m sorry I missed you coming in. How’d things go? What did Isaac want?” 

_Ah, fuck_ . Right. Her thoughts jumbled, piecing together bits of truth and lies, trying to form them into some semblance of a coherent thought. She needed to wake up. Needed to think. Jude slowly pushed herself upright, and her mom dropped her hand, moving further up the bed. “It, uh,” _went awful._ “Went okay.”

A beat. Then, “Okay…?” Her voice lilted up in a question mark. 

She wanted details. Of course she did. Jude groaned, stretching her arms over her head to stall for time, and stared into the shadowy framework of their shared space, deliberately avoiding her mom’s gaze. It was dark, but she could hear the faint rumbles and crashes of people still milling about outside. “Yeah. It went okay.” She repeated, like it would make her mom forget her question. 

“Well, that’s... good.” She heard Connie shift and fidget for a moment, then sigh. “Is everything okay?” Connie asked, softly, hesitantly, as if she was trying not to spook her. 

Jude pressed her lips together, “of course it is,” she said, and nearly flinched. It came out harsher than she’d meant it to, and a minor cord of guilt strummed through her. She was dodging, and it was painfully, painfully obvious. “I just gotta be up early tomorrow. My number got called for a thing Isaac needs done.”

“Oh?”

 _Keep it close to the truth._ “Yeah. Me and a few others are gonna go on a supply run. Or something. It’s a little farther out than usual. Isaac…” her train of thought sputtered out, her half-truth cutting out at the tailend with no excuse to finish it off. _Fuck. Fuck_. “Said that, uhh, he wants me to head up the team. Bill must’ve... put in a good word for me.” Bill Forster was a sexist bastard that hated her fucking guts, and he’d gleefully toss her into a pit of shamblers for the fun of it. The feeling was mutual. “Or something.”

“Oh!” _So much for keeping it close to the truth._ “Wow! That’s… great.” She said it like a question, and Jude barely held back a snort. Yeah, she was real fucking lucky. “When do you leave tomorrow?”

“Dawn.”

“So early.”

“Yeah.” Jude sighed. She pushed some hair out of her face, cringing at the thin layer of oil that came away on her fingertips. Gross. 

“Sorry for waking you, then. I’ll let you get back to sleep.” Connie said, patting her knee. The bed creaked as she stood up, and Jude quickly followed.

“No, it’s okay. I’m actually gonna hit the showers, put some stuff together for tomorrow, things like that. Is it cool if I leave that light on?”

“Yeah, of course. Whatever you think is best, honey.” Connie replied, turning to her side note of the room. 

She didn’t like lying, not really. She bent the truth sometimes. More often than most would prefer, probably. But the outright lie sat uncomfortably in the air, heavy, guilty with weight. “Hey, Ma,” Jude started, watching the shadowy lines of her mother turn around. “I love you.” 

A heartbeat passed. Then two. Jude felt it like pressure on a bruise. 

Finally, her mother said, “I love you too,” in a soft, resigned way.

It sounded like goodbye. Which, Jude supposed, it was.

* * *

By the time Jude finished showering, stuffing her pack, and gathering up enough emotional willpower to not cry, scream, or snap, it was only a few hours from dawn, and she was frustratingly awake. She tossed, turned, and begged her mind to quiet, to give her a moment of rest before tomorrow--today, really. Eventually, she slipped into a loose, shallow sleep that interrupted itself at every little sound.

Morning came on the back of a thunderstorm, clouds the color of slate covering the whole sky, and the rain came down hard, hard enough that she knew it would last most of the day. Fantastic.

That numb sensation came back. The body going through the motions in a desensitized, mechanical way even as her mind raced and churned. She tied her boots on thinking of the night she had crawled back to their hiding place, shaking and bleeding and bruised after narrowly escaping a pack of runners. She double checked her pack, remembered the night in what used to be a 7-Eleven, cowering behind a counter as the shambler staggered the isles, looking for her. She tucked her father’s old knife into a clip-on sheath and felt the phantom pains of a clicker shrieking in her face as she drove the knife through its neck. She pulled on her jacket, deep blue denim, and thought of the terror that had ripped through her when a broken-jawed runner couldn’t quite get its teeth through the fabric.

Jude did all of this silently, listening to the rain. She stopped only once, coming next to Connie’s bed and gently shaking her awake. “I’m going now, Ma.” 

“Okay, baby.” Her mother slurred, not opening her eyes.

“I love you.”

“Mhmm.” 

“I’ll be back soon,” Jude whispered, but it sounded weak to her own ears. She pulled the covers back over her mother’s shoulders, and then she was gone. 

* * *

203\. That’s what she had said. Meet her at 203. The stadium was quiet, with only a few walking about, getting ready for the day. The mess hall wouldn’t be open for another hour. In a few hours Bill would show up to work exactly 30 minutes late, as he always did, and give her a cold look like she was the one doing something wrong. 

She found Abby’s room 20 minutes later. _Anderson, Abigail. Alvarez, Emanuel._ And it clicked: _Manny Alvarez._

The dark-eyed man with fast hands and a faster grin. A year ago, he’d offered her an almost empty bottle of whiskey on the truck, congratulating her on not dying. She still remembered how he frowned when she flinched; just a flash, there and gone, before he’d nudged the bottle at her again. She was pretty sure they used it for disinfecting injuries in the field, but she’d guzzled it either way, hands still shaking. Maybe they were together, then. Didn’t make any difference to Jude one way or another. 

One sharp rap on the door later, and Jude heard a dampened, “give me a minute,” from somewhere inside. There was a short conversation, indecipherable beyond the tired, biting tone, and something that sounded a bit like _get the fucking door_ , and then a man suddenly filled the doorway. Shirtless. Manny. 

Well, then.

His hair was longer now, she thought absently, not bothering to look much lower than his face. She hadn’t thought of him much since coming to the WLF, and their interactions were even fewer than that--none at all. But he’d stayed exactly the same in her mind’s eye. Dark hair sticking to his forehead. Blood staining his shirt, coating his right hand. The same hand he’d used to pull a Scar’s body off her before she knew what Scars were, and yank her off the ground. “ _What_ \--” he snapped, then took a real look at her. “Oh, hello.” First time getting a good look at the guy in a year, and he gave her the same wry grin, leaning on the door frame like he thought he was charming.

It was too damn early for this. Any sentimentality bled out of her quick as it arrived. Jude bit back a sigh.

“Who is it?” She heard a woman’s voice from inside. Abby.

“Who is it?” Manny repeated, arching one eyebrow. “Do I know you?”

She frowned. Isaac had mentioned him by name. Maybe there was a record somewhere, or Manny remembered a name but not a face. Or maybe it had been someone else. She supposed it didn’t matter either way. “We were in a truck together once.” Jude replied drily, letting her face fall into an expression she knew screamed _fuck off_ , even if she didn’t say it. Manny was about to respond when she interrupted with, “I’m Jude. Looking for Abigail?”

He searched her face, flitting over the soft contours and curves of her features. Briefly, she wondered what he saw, what he was thinking. It would probably be a good indicator of what Abby thought. Manny worked his jaw, his expression somewhere between irritated and amused, opened his mouth to say something, then must’ve thought better of it. He simply stepped away from the door, giving her a half view of their shared space. She watched Abby’s shadows move around the floor. “Hey, _Abigail_ ,” he smiled again--must do that a lot--and he put emphasis on her name, like he thought it was funny. “It’s, ah, _Jude_. For you.”

To the point. She appreciated that. He stepped back further, allowing her to pass, and stared. Her skin itched--a little like when Isaac looked at her. Like he was trying to figure her out. 

She walked past him, feeling the burn of his eyes on her neck, and she heard Abby before she saw her. “I said give me a minute,” and Jude came face to… back. There was a flash of skin, freckled and bruisy, there and gone, and Jude flinched away as Abby tugged the rest of her black t-shirt down.

She looked back to see Abby’s hair was damp and loose. The muscles of her back knotted and unknotted beneath the stretch of black fabric. She reached behind her, fingers quickly tugging dark blonde hair into a french braid with all the ease of everyday practice.

Jude looked away again, forcing herself not to stare.

Shirtless Manny. Freshly showered Abby. Well. She must’ve looked awkward enough, because Manny barely choked back a laugh when she said, “is this a bad time?”

“Shit,” Abby sighed, turning around, working the ends of her hair into its braid. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Jude said, working to keep her voice neutral. She shoved her hands in her pockets, and rolled back on her heels. “You said meet you here. Dawn.”

“Yeah.” Abby replied shortly, muttering a quiet curse of _fuck, it’s early,_ and sat on, presumably, her bed (there were two, which Jude thought was a little weird if they were sleeping together, but it wasn’t any of her business) and yanked on her boots with a little more force than necessary. “I’ll be done here in a second.”

There were books. Several of them, all stacked and crowded atop a shelf above her bed, the kind of old, wordy ones that her mom would call classics and Jude would call boring. And photos too, taped on her wall. Jude wondered if there was any significance to them.

Behind her, Manny yanked on a shirt-- _thank fuck_ \--and said, “so, you’re going into sector twelve?” 

“Yep.” Jude said unhelpfully. Her teeth ground till they ached.

“That place is a shitshow.” He said, like it struck a nerve. Like it was personal, like it meant something at all to him. Maybe it did. He chewed at his cheek, and Jude focused on the slight indentation of his cheek, avoiding his eyes.

“I know.” 

“Oh?”

“I was there.” 

“You were-- _oh._ ” He smiled again, and this time it was a little more genuine, a little less charming bastard, and Jude’s lips twitched upward despite herself. ”Hey--you’re the girl we found. I don’t know how I didn’t recognize you.”

“It’s probably the lack of blood.” She drawled. Deadpan, but not sharp, and Manny laughed, patting her shoulder with his open palm as he did. 

“Maybe that’s it.” Manny frowned at the floor, his eyes scanning nothing. “How’s your mom? I remember her, too.”

Jude blinked, taken aback. “She’s, uhh, she’s fine. Got put to work helping out families as a nurse.” She grinned a sharp little grin. “She’s scamming people on the side for crappy homemade candles.”

“Wait, that’s your mom?” Abby said. “God. Nora loves those fucking things.”

“Didn’t she give you one?” Manny said, rolling back on his heels.

“Yeah. Wasn’t too bad.”

Jude mumbled, “wasn’t too bad. Make that our slogan,” and all three of them chuckled.

She shifted uncomfortably, wondering how the conversation had drifted into this; casual, soft spoken. She didn’t know either of them, and she didn’t want to. Rolling her lips together, Jude said, “we should get a move on. Isaac wants us on the road today.”

There was a moment where Abby’s expression eased from its stiff, hard line, but it was gone once she said that. Jude felt a brief burst of guilt, and promptly shut it down. “You’re right.” Abby nodded. In a few short, easy motions, she’d zipped up her jacket, and swung her pack over her shoulders. 

_She moves just like a soldier,_ Jude thought. Everyone in the WLF was a soldier in one way or another, but Abby moved like she meant it, breathed like she knew it. Like she was born for the straight-edged lines and the _mission_ and all the _getting shit done._ Not quite like the casual violence of some of the other soldiers Jude knew. There was bite to her. Jude didn’t know what to make of it.

“Hey,” Manny said, his palm coming to bear on Abby’s arm. Jude watched the short embrace--Manny pulling her in, tapping her back once--and focused her gaze onto Abby’s hand, clenched on Manny’s shoulder. They were strong hands, set sturdy on her wrists, firm in their movements, steady. There were bruises on her scabbed over knuckles, yellowing out into the scuffed up skin of her hand. Jude could see her picking someone up as easily as she knocked them down. “Be safe out there, Abs.” 

“And you,” A single, crooked finger jutted at her, forcing her back to attention. “You keep an eye on her. I know you know how to use that knife.” He said, a half-baked laugh tacked on at the end, but it was… colder. There was almost a threat in the sudden narrow of his eyes, the drop of his smile. As if she better keep her safe, or else. She nearly chipped a tooth, gritting her teeth so hard. Wanted to snap that she’d be going alone if she had it her way. That she wouldn’t be here at all. That all of this was bullshit.

But she didn’t. Instead, Abby scoffed. “Please. I’m not gonna let some _Scar_ get the best of me.” 

In an instant, that low burning threat in Manny’s eyes drifted away, leaving again only a soft, friendly face in its place. “C’mon, for me?”

“Yeah, yeah.” 

“Good.” He said, clear and firm. A silent conversation passed between the two, one Jude wasn’t privy to. It was in Abby’s jerky nod and Manny’s warm, but tired gaze, and nothing was said, nothing at all, but Jude knew there was nothing flippant in Abby’s promise to stay safe. They couldn’t afford flippancy. None of them.

She thought of her mother, sleeping soundly upstairs, and her chest ached, like she was missing something. Or like something had been taken from her. She pushed it aside, straightening up when Manny turned to her and said, “may your survival be long.” 

A moment passed, Jude thumbing at the hilt of her father’s knife, letting the cold steel end rub her skin near raw. Finally, she nodded. “And may our deaths be swift.”

He said nothing on the variation. He didn’t need to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed <3 again, really sorry if there's any really bad typos. I'll probably go over this and check it over again in the morning. feel free to comment, give feedback, etc. etc. -- and thanks so much!


	3. knife sharp

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, everyone!! sorry for the delay on chapter three. school has been kicking my ASS lately, but! i'm very excited to post this. things are gonna start to pick up a little bit after this, and i'm ready to get into it! and i'm Very Excited to write jude being an absolute menace.
> 
> this IS unbeta'd, so i apologize for any typos or problems with it. if you see anything really embarrassing, feel free to point it out so i can fix it. thanks so much!!! i really hope you all enjoy this <3

By the time they made it to the garage, the rain had already soaked through every layer of Jude’s clothes. Her hands rubbed against each other, trying to create some semblance of warmth. The grey-blue October morning air was frigid enough that her breath escaped her in plumes of filmy smoke. Jude clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering.

A new kid took Pat’s place today. He hadn’t seen them yet; sniffled, blurry eyed, as if he’d just been shaken awake a few minutes ago. Abby walked--stomped, really, and Jude wondered if she knew how to be quiet--right up and said, “hey, David. Just my usual,” jerking him out of his sleep-addled state. She took up the entire counter, both hands splayed wide across it.

The kid--David, apparently, sleepy eyes brightened and wide--leaned back, and nodded quickly. "Hey Abby. Sure thing." He made to scramble off when Abby added, blatant hesitation on her face, “and the same for her.” _Her_ , complete with a thumb jutted in Jude’s direction. 

It chafed, like sandpaper on skin.

The kid behind the counter nodded again, and shuffled off to collect their guns. 

A few seconds passed, and Abby sighed, as if she’d expected the minor delay. Rocked back and forth on her heels. Curled her wide-palmed hand into a fist once, then relaxed it, repeat. Suddenly she turned about face, and Jude met the cut of her eyes with a loose glower. Leaning her hips on the edge of the counter, Abby crossed her arms and arched a single brow, as if daring Jude to say something, anything.

Abby watched, and Jude _felt_ it, her gaze. Felt the way it slowly traced the dips and curves and details of her, her brows furrowing at the way Jude’s palm hovered against the weavy sheath of her knife. Her eyes flickered up, like nails tracing along the spine, and Jude straightened beneath the scrutiny. 

Jude chewed the inside of her cheek till the soft skin there tasted like iron. She rolled her tongue over the minor wound and didn’t blink, barely breathed. 

Finally Abby glanced away, staring at some spot on a nearby wall. “I’m driving.” She said, stiff and distant. 

In any other situation, that would’ve been just fine. Suited her, really. Oh, she could fix cars. She could take an oversized metal death trap and put it back in dancing condition for some other driver, but she’d nearly crashed last time _she’d_ tried to make a car dance. Her hands always shook with the nerves of a self-taught brand new driver, never quite getting used to the curve of the wheel in her grip. She sure as shit didn’t want to drive in the rain toward her fast approaching death. 

But it was about the principle of it all. It was about the hard line of Abby’s mouth and the way her tone didn’t give an inch, brokered no room for argument, and the way Jude hated that.

“Why?” Jude asked, shifting from one foot to another as her soles numbed. Her fingers bit into the damp, scratchy fabric of her jacket, stinging the skin below it. “Thought I was supposed to be your guide?” She spat out the last word like a bad taste, her face pinching up.

“You know how to get there from here?” The question was more like a statement, and Jude scowled. Abby probably knew damn well she had no fucking clue just _how_ to get to sector twelve from the stadium. Maybe it was in a file somewhere, if they kept that sort of thing (the WLF are nothing if not organized), smacked right under _raging bitch_ and just before _smartmouth_ . She had a general idea of the landscape of Seattle, sure, just like anyone else. But she’d watched it all from the back of trucks, driven by wolves who knew where they were going, and always _away_ , never towards sector twelve. The way she preferred it.

Jude’s shoulders bunched up near her ears, and she tried not to drop her eyes to the floor.

Abby’s gaze snapped back, her fingers working over her biceps, so tightly the blood leached from her hand, leaving behind only sickly yellow bruises around her first three knuckles.

Jude relented, glaring at the ground. “...Not exactly.” Her inner cheek split completely under her worrying teeth. 

“Right.” Abby said, turning back around, “I’m driving.” As if striking the final note in their conversation. Jude sucked in a sharp breath, bit off a scathing response, and focused on the way the blood tasted in her mouth and the way that she wasn’t fucking incompetent, she wasn’t, and _fuck_ Abby for acting like it. 

The kid clambered back to the window with their guns in hand. His thin shoulders sagged under the weight of the two rifles. “Here you go, Abby.” He said, beaming up at her, a dim flush to his cheeks. Jude rolled her eyes hard enough to ache. Abby, on the other hand, shot him a little smile as she hitched her rifle on her shoulder and holstered her pistol in quick, efficient movements.

Abby didn’t hand Jude her own guns. Held Jude’s pistol in one hand and the strap of Jude’s rifle gripped in the other. 

Her jaw burned from how tightly she clenched it. 

“Thanks, David.” Abby said. It was genuine enough, her voice taking on a softer, more polite quality. David pushed his greasy brown hair back and smoothed down his wrinkled shirt. If Abby noticed the attention, she paid it no mind, giving him a shallow nod of gratitude. 

“Of course. You need anything else?” He said, a little too eager, and his hair flopped back over his pimply forehead. 

This time, Jude actually snorted. _Get a life, kid,_ she thought, and Abby asked, “yeah, you know what trucks are in right now?”

Before David could get a word in edgewise, Jude snapped, “you want R37.” It was in. She knew it was. Worked on it two days ago and hadn’t given the all-clear for it to go out in the field yet, mostly out of a selfish desire to not see all her hard work go to shit just yet. A truck with sun-faded white paint and a rusty grill on the front she’d spent two days scrubbing dried blood out of, with a decent enough engine and fewer problems than most of their trucks. It plied under her hands easy enough that Jude was relatively confident she could fix it if anything happened while they were gone. And something would, undoubtedly, happen.

Abby craned her head sideways to look at her, one brow arched in question, and Jude shrugged as if to say, _what?_

Abby shook her head, then gestured to David’s clipboard with her free hand. The other still held her gun. Jude’s eyes twitched.

“Is R37 still in?” She asked, still polite enough, still genuine, and her expression wasn't its severe scowl, as far as Jude could tell from this angle. David shifted uncomfortably, gaze flickering between his clipboard and Abby and Jude--Jude, who he squinted at, just a little, like she was interrupting something.

She rolled her eyes again.

“Uh, yeah… but it’s not ready to go yet--” 

“It’s ready.” Jude snapped, stepping right up to the counter. She didn’t necessarily _shove_ anyone, but to accommodate the space, Abby was forced to step to the side, and she felt a petty sort of victory at that. “Let me see that.” Jude gestured for the clipboard with a short, sharp hand motion. She didn’t look up to see Abby’s face, but she could feel the probing gaze settling like hot coals on her cheek, her neck. David hesitated, his hand still tight around the clipboard, like it actually meant something. “Any day now, kid.” Jude glared, and he slowly passed it to her.

Jude skimmed the lines of trucks, some checked off, others not, until she found the one she was looking for. R37. Not cleared. Mechanic: Judith Copeland. She grabbed the pen hanging by a string from the board, and quickly checked it off, signing her name over a thin black line. “Good to go,” she said, handing it back to him. 

While David made a show of pretending to have some authority, squinting at her scrawled signature, Jude took the chance with her hands free to reach for her gun, still pressed firmly under Abby’s hand. “You mind?” Jude said, craning her neck to look Abby in the eye. She nearly stepped back when she realized their proximity.

God, she was close, much closer than before. Close enough that Jude felt the soft heat of her breath on her face as she exhaled. 

Jude flinched back, just a little.

“Where’d you learn to use this thing?” Abby asked, keeping her hand firm over the pistol, pushing her back straight like she was hot shit. Jude ignored how it brought them an inch closer, then seethed at how Abby’s blue eyes--the stormy morning light brought the grey out in them, and it would almost be pretty if she wasn’t insufferable--didn’t waver, not even once.

 _Who the hell does she think she is?_ “I seriously doubt I’d be here if I didn’t know how to use a fucking pistol--” 

In front of them, David cleared his throat, and both of them barked, “ _what?_ ” at the exact same time. 

Abby looked at her.

Jude refused to look back.

“You, uhh, want your keys?” He asked, dangling a set of keys in his left hand while his right rubbed at the back of his neck.

“Yeah,” Abby said, knocking her hip into Jude’s waist as she reached for them.

The place where her solid hips met Jude’s softer waist burned, and so did her cheeks, a fuming heat under the skin of her cheeks. Her mouth had always worked faster than her head, so when Jude sneered, “anyone ever tell you you’re kind of an asshole?” she didn’t give herself any time to reconsider, let alone regret it.

Abby stilled. Then she turned around, pocketed the keys, and her mouth tilted into a sardonic, jagged curve of a sneer. “Once or twice.” She said, shoving herself away from the window. Her voice cut low, with a kind of carelessness Jude didn’t quite know what to do with. 

She offered Jude the handle of the gun. Hesitated when Jude reached for it. Then relented, though her brow never relaxed from its stiff, hard frown.

Their fingers brushed as Jude took it, slowly and carefully. She checked the safety, then tucked it into the waistband of her jeans. 

“Now let’s get a move on.” And then she stomped off, puddles of rain splashing against her boots.

A building guilt pressed its edge into Jude’s gut, ugly and rotten. She pushed it down, her mouth still tasting of her own blood, and followed Abby’s soldier march all the way to the car. 

* * *

Abby settled into the driver’s seat with ease, her steady-wristed hands confident and sure of themselves as she rolled them out of the stadium, out of the surrounding area, out onto the bumpy main highway patrolled by wolves. The highway would take them far enough, probably, but Jude remembered those maps in Isaac’s… office. His crossed out areas and his red-inked circles, and she remembered hushed news about how they’d been forced to cede territory, the Scars pushing them out inch by inch, one skirmish at a time. It was easier to simply give non-priority locations. Get out their own people, live to fight another day, hunker down, take their licks and swear they were gonna get back those fucking Scars soon enough.

There would always be more chances to drive out Scars. Always more fights to win. But she wondered if the highways were as long as they’d been a year ago. She wondered how quickly they’d lose the watchful eyes of the WLF patrols, how quickly their well-protected territory would give into no man’s land. Were they driving through it now? 

Jude risked a real glance at Abby for the first time since they’d clambered into the truck. Abby watched the road, a wrinkle of concentration on her brow, left hand on the wheel and right arm propped up on the armrest. She’d shucked the jacket when they’d gotten in the car, tossing it into the back. 

For a moment, Jude just watched. Watched the way the black cloth of her t-shirt worked against her skin, and the way it pressed taut when she breathed. Watched the fine lines of tendon and muscle go rigid when she turned the wheel, or made a fist on the console. Thin scratches and bruises and minor scars crisscrossed the freckled expanse of her sturdy forearms, the same kind of wear and tear they all had, but on Abby it was different. Sharper. 

“What?” Abby said suddenly, and Jude stiffened in her seat. She looked up to find Abby’s flickering gaze, switching back and forth from the road to her, eyes never quite leaving the road. 

Jude swallowed hard, then frowned. “What?” She parroted, leaning back and pressing herself to the unforgiving curve of the door, watching Abby watch the road, watch her.

“You’re staring.” She stated, a thin note of wryness dragging through her vowels.

Jude expected their silence to settle back into its uncomfortable place, but Abby continued. “I’m not stopping the car, if that’s what you want. Better if we stay on the move.” 

“Why? There Scars in the area?”

“Yeah,” Abby replied, her hand clenching and unclenching around the steering wheel. She shifted slightly, the cracked leather of the seat creaking beneath her. “Patrol spotted some a couple of weeks ago. Said they took care of most of them, but…” her voice trailed off, working her jaw. “I’m not gonna risk it.” 

She didn’t try to carry the conversation any further than that, the weight of her words sitting heavy in the air.

A beat of silence passed between them, like pressing down on a bruise. Jude adjusted in her seat once, twice. She turned to watch the rain outside the car window, knees curled up to her chest. Empty shells that used to be buildings moved behind thick streaks of distorting rainwater. Abby deftly dodged old cars, cracks in the road, the truck groaning under them each time she took a curve a little too fast. After a few moments, she murmured, “you got any idea how bad it’ll be where we’re going?”

Abby exhaled a rough, exasperated sigh. “Pretty fucking bad?” She almost snapped, like it was a dumb question. And it was. It was. But Jude wanted it confirmed anyway; wanted her nightmares to be real, so at least she could prepare for them.

She turned just her head, watching the other woman. Abby opened her mouth, then closed it, as if she’d thought better of whatever she wanted to say. “We’ve… lost a lot of units. And they never got very far in the first place. Isaac thinks we’re missing something. So…” one of her eyebrows arched up, up, up, and her lips tightened. She looked away from the road long enough to catch Jude’s gaze, and Jude held her breath. “Recon. That’s my job. Just need you to not get us lost.”

Abby looked away, and scoffed a little, shaking her head. “Or killed.”

Jude’s teeth grinded together, hard enough she felt the ache spread down her jaw. “I’ll do my best.” She sneered, digging herself further into her chair. 

“Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks so much for reading!!! i hope you enjoyed this!!!! its a lot of fun to kind of explore abby, and how she is, when she's not around people she knows very well / trusts... especially someone whos also kind of Prickly, the way jude is.... anyways! feel free to hmu on tumblr @abbyandersn if you want! i am always here 2 clown around and talk about miss abigail anderson


End file.
